Christopher Schroeder

Category: community and culture

  • Just What The Doctor Ordered

    Just What The Doctor Ordered

    Dana Suskind’s latest book Human Raised: Nurturing Connect, Curiosity, & Lifelong Learning in the Age of AI might target parents but offers insights for all of us.

    Suskind, who is also a University of Chicago surgery and pediatrics professor, encourages parents to foreground the irreplaceable human connection, own their parenting imperfections, protect their kids’ early years, and limit AI to enhancing adult-child interactions, or HOPE. She also describes ways that AI can support parents and newborns with language learning or sleep habits as well as reduce demands on both busy parents and overburdened teachers.

    Suskind’s expertise and experience establish a compelling context for this project, and her voice is immediately noticeable. She integrates research and experience, both professional and personal, with an engaging personality in ways that will appeal to, and engage, her intended audience.

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    The effect is an established authority that commands attention yet remains accessible and compassionate. As a result, her perspective and approach, which consistently position parents at the center, are compelling and convincing. In these, AI functions as a powerful tool that serves human ends rather than dictates or worse determines these.

    Suskind repeatedly encourages parents to retain their instincts, and refuses to relinquish these to not just AI agents but also pediatricians. She also models her perspective in the ways that she owns her own parenting imperfections, which she incorporates into her argument for doing so.

    Artificial intelligence Suskind acknowledges encourages users to expect perfection. Parents however should understand that their failures, and what follows, are ways that their children develop crucial life skills, such as individual resilience and relationship repair.

    This argument can reassure new parents, who can use it to calibrate their own criteria, and even older ones, including those who have grown children as I do. I’ve suggested to my spouse that we were good enough parents, which was more than enough, but Suskind offers an even more compelling argument for such parenting as even more.

    This example suggests the larger appeal of this book. It caught my attention because I have been searching for first, or foundational, AI principles, and wondered if despite its intended audience it would suggest some. From it, I learned a way of thinking about both my parenting and my AI approach, which is even more than I hoped.

    AI according to Suskind should never substitute for human connection, imperfection can trump efficacy and efficiency, certain parts of human experience must be protected, and our efforts can be usefully enhanced with smart strategies.

    These insights are useful for raising kids, and living, in a world of artificial intelligence.

  • Neither Silly Nor Smart

    Neither Silly Nor Smart

    I expected to enjoy The End of Oak Street, as credible critics suggested I would, more than I did.

    This movie, which is written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, tells the story of a suburban housewife, and aspiring novelist, named Denise (Anne Hathaway) and her disintegrating marriage to Greg (Ewan McGregor) as their neighborhood is teleported to prehistoric times. Denise must save her children Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery) and their acquaintance Jeannette (Jordan Alexa Davis) by jumping into a shimmering, and blinking, wormhole blob that returns them to their present where she warns, and saves, her husband and neighbors.

    I like others was intrigued by the Amblin allusions, such as the suburban adventure and physical effects that appeal to kids and grownups. These were supplemented with thriller conventions more associated with Mitchell, and make me wonder whether the movie was more dystopian than I initially believed.

    The effort is an inconsistent tone that for me highlighted awkward performances and stilted scenes. As a result, it wasn’t the “refreshingly, doesn’t care,” and fun, movie that some, such as NPR Pop Cultural Happy Hour host Linda Holmes and her guests, claim it is.

    Holmes, who in her accompanying newsletter surveys Mitchell’s previous efforts, argues that he and his cinematographer Mike Gioulakis use experimental techniques without compromising control. As a result, she believes believes that this hybrid action-adventure horror movie, which relies upon a simple structure, a satisfying theme, and a short running time, is intentionally “raucous and silly” with “over-the-top” moments as an entertaining experience that viewers deserve.

    I’m unsure how to reconcile this analysis, which seems plausible and persuasive, with the mindless summer entertainment, and more fun in a group, conclusion. Does fun need the neutralization of perception and reflection? What makes this movie any different from other mindless entertainment with which we’re amusing ourselves to death?

    The problem isn’t a lack of potential. For example, Denise recounts her experience in a replacement manuscript — her previous one is lost in a basement flood — that is published as a book, and is presumably why her family seems wealthier at the end than they were in the beginning, which raises questions about 1980s intersectionality that are unacknowledged.

    The ending in contrast does acknowledge a different problem, and potential. The military has secured Denise’s neighborhood, scientists are investigating wormholes, and Denise’s family hosts a barbecue with Jeannette’s parents and two versions of her.

    The second Jeannette, which is presumably a cloned version, is required, or resolved, by the plot. Denise after leaping into the wormhole and returning to their present orders a pizza that Greg delivers — he had been delivering pizzas to Denise’s dismay after he was fired from Chrysler, and her kids and she witnessed his death by dinosaurs in the prehistoric world — and apparently also warns Jeannette’s parents, who seemingly escape with her.

    Any residual escapist entertainment evaporated for me the moment two Jeannettes appeared at the barbecue. They however and the others quickly disappear with the end of the movie, which concludes with even more unasked questions.

    I suppose that Jeanette’s parents couldn’t be convinced, especially in such a short span of time, to leave her behind. I also suppose that Greg didn’t even consider whether to get the rest of his family because he was delivering pizzas without them, and wasn’t told he was escaping an imminent tragedy.

    I enjoy entertainment, and even escapism, as much as anyone. I just resent any time such experiences encourage me to ignore questions, and require me to sacrifice skepticism and relinquish reason, especially while aspiring to be something more substantial.

  • Things That Should Be Said

    Things That Should Be Said

    I was more excited about getting to read Elizabeth Strout’s latest novel The Things We Never Say than I am about having read it.

    I tend to like Strout’s novels more than I expect, so I thought that this one, and especially its fifty-seven-year-old high school history teacher protagonist named Artie, would be even better. Artie, like so many of us, is beset by a loneliness that as its epigraph attests comes from his alienation in the midst of others.

    Artie and his wife of many years Evie are struggling with the emotional aftermath of their son Rob’s car crash that killed his girlfriend. Artie discovers that his initial response, which is suicide, isn’t as appealing after he falls into the water while stepping into his sailboat, and that he actually has a desire to live, which he spends the rest of the novel trying to do.

    Other critics praise have praised this novel for many reasons, including this memorable protagonist and its cast of characters and its spare yet sharp style.

    I also admired it for its political and personal timeliness. Loneliness if social media are any indication besets the best of us, and the Trump administration antics can alienate all of us, and in that offer us some common ground.

    I additionally appreciated the intersection of character and plot, and especially Artie’s connection with his son Rob, whose circumstances push them closer and later pull them apart. One contributing cause is Evie’s secret that is exposed yet never confronted, which sadly seems so familiar.

    I could recognize the potential in other choices, such as a shifting POV that promises an unprovided intimacy. That and others reinforce the loneliness theme, and combine for a rhetorically withheld catharsis that cleverly compelled me to keep reading and unfortunately was ultimately unsatisfying.

    This condition can be seen in Artie, whose experiences that he both can and cannot change illustrate the excruciating effect of loneliness around others. His motivation however is never quite clear.

    Is Artie driven by his relative poor childhood or his current political outrage or even a righteous indignation over political and personal circumstances combined with an unavoidable awareness of his relative privilege? The answer can never be found in the accumulation of too many tragedies, one after another until the end.

    I respect Strout’s effort, and her commitment to and confidence in this project. I just believe that the book would have been better served with at least another draft.

    The loss is all that this book could but doesn’t say, which is even more lamentable in light of its final paragraphs and our current circumstances.